It’s good to be back POQing again after a small hiatus – nothing like a good POQ to get back into the swing of things.
The biggest news on the international pharmacy front seems to be the highly covered and sizzling situation boiling over in the province of Ontario in that giant country all tucked away up in the northerly direction of the States. That’s right, new legislation in the normally subdued and mild-mannered Canada has got both sides SEETHING with contempt on who will be to blame for what is expected to be the demise of independent pharmacy and to the fate of the pharmacy institution as a whole.
As was covered in one of the country’s most far reaching papers, The National Post, as well as numerous other hard copy and online news magazines (see here Macleans), the Ontario government as set in motion legislation that will put a cap on the allowable amount charged for generic medicines, that is pharmacies can now charge at maximum 25% of the brand name costs. The decision comes after literally years of budget review on how to decrease the annual millions spent by the government on drug costs – Ontario is the second largest medicines payer in North America and pays for medicines for seniors, the poor and many other social sectors. It should be noted, however, that this legislation also limits the selling price to private payers, that is insurance companies or patients themselves.
The result, as it seems, is that Ontario pharmacies will suffer huge losses in revue, revenue that is used to staff pharmacists in the extensive hours that are now the norm and for services such as patient counselling, pill packs, and general pharmacy services that have come to be the norm, as it appears that pharmacies in this province gain significant revenues from increases in generic medicines sell-price as well as supplementation from the generic companies themselves for stocking certain products (read the full explanation in the Macleans article here).
OK, we all know there is a global economic crises but as a once-practicing pharmacist I am appalled by what I read in the Maclean’s article, MAINLY that these budget-cutting decisions were made by a politician who is NOT a pharmacist. What I find equally appalling is the unbreakable bond that societies and governments continue to make between the product of medicines and the practice of pharmacy – nowhere in this new legislation, it seems, were payment of patient services considered, public health influence or communicative aspects of the profession. It was merely the drugs, and that’s it. Are we still just the pill-pushers? *shudder*
But, those recently mentioned services are what will be chopped from the pharmacy block when revenues dip, pharmacies cannot staff a sufficient amount of pharmacists nor stay open long hours. What the government failed to consider is that a large portion of those revenues went to subsidise these patient-centred services – are pharmacists expected to do it for free?
In my mind, this appears to be a huge step back for the profession in a country that is known for respectable and universal healthcare. I can’t pretend to know all the details but if I were a practitioner in an Ontario pharmacy, I’d be up in arms.
A very interesting twist in legislation just happened in the US, one that will definitely set a precedent in the foreseen lengthy race between science and technology and the law.
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n’t…I even find the concept of people supporting a “myth” of HIV/AIDS horrifying, a callback to the early days when lagging scientific research and homophobia clouded a true understanding of the disease, its origins and its prevention.
echer, a WWII doctor turned researcher who witnessed a wounded soldier find relief from a syringe of saline solution when told it was morphine.